Invitation to Debate: A New Format to Promote Debate and Community Building

Scientific conferences serve the presentation and discussion of current research topics. They are also intended to promote community building. This also includes exchanges on e.g. the conditions of research and teaching, and related threats and opportunities. Beyond private conversations, such topics are sometimes addressed in panel discussions at conferences. While panel discussions represent an important format, which is a traditional part of conferences such as CAiSE, CBI-EDOC, etcetera, an active participation of all members of the community in the debate is limited.

This year's CAiSE conference will experiment with a new format Invitation to Debate that is intended to enable more extensive participation in the discussion of topics that are important to the community. Central to the Invitation to Debate format is a small team of debate leaders who will guide, and stimulate, the debate along, and on, different venues. Such debates are kickstarted by publishing some controversial position statements (of about 2 to 4 pages in LNBIP format). These can then be complemented by additional counter, or complementary, statements. The actual, broader, debate can then involve -- linked to the position statements -- discussions on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, BlueSky or Mastodon, as well as Open Debate sessions at conferences and other events.

The latter Open Debate sessions are specifically intended as being fundamentally different from the traditional panel sessions. These sessions will typically start by having one of the debate leaders provide a summary of the debate so-far. Some of the authors of position statements will be "on stage" as well. Initially to provide answers from the audience regarding their position statements, but specially also to continue the debate with the audience. As such, an active participation of the audience is expected to create a truly open debate.

The first topic, to be discussed in this new format is:

“Information Systems Engineering research at a Crossroads: Enslavement by rankings, or true pursuit of knowledge?”

with as debate leaders Ulrich Frank and Henderik Proper.

This topic also builds on the debate that emerged during "Revisiting the business model of scientific publishing" panel discussion held during CBI-EDOC 2024.

Position statements for this topic are available HERE.

Information Systems Engineering Research at a Crossroads: Enslavement by rankings, or true pursuit of knowledge?

Science represents one of the major achievements of human civilization. Scientific knowledge has enabled humanity to solve and understand a wide range of serious problems. At the same time, in present day society, science seems to have (d)evolved into a ranking-driven social system. The latter may have a perceived advantage of providing an objective way to measure the quality of scientists and their institutions.

At the same time, it has given rise to goals and patterns of action that are not always in harmony with the actual mission of science; the pursuit of knowledge. Rankings of institutes and scientists seem to increasingly become an end in themselves, resulting in a "enslavement by ranking", over-specialization resulting in "scientific silos", and even an alienation of scientists from their actual mission.

For Information Systems Engineering as a field of science, which takes much of its inspiration from practice, this raises potentially serious existential questions. As such, this is clearly a topic that concerns all of us, and it is certainly associated with controversial points of view. As such, a good starting point for a debate with a large number of participants from our community.

Words like “enslavement” and “true pursuit” are provocative by design. Nevertheless, our community seems to be at a crossroads, where provocative statements can aid in raising a direly needed debate.

Discussions pertaining to this debate can be found on:

Meanwhile, during the RIDI workshop at the 2025 Bled conference, an open debate on this topic was also held.

Crossroad Position Statements